Another 3rd party router quatestion - Deco M5

[kevinpaulwest]

Recently moved from FTTC to FTTP and wish to connect my TP-link Deco M5 dirrectly to my ONT rather than use my Smart Hub 2.

I'd like to avoid double NAT and unnecessary clutter 🙂

I've switched my connection type to PPPoE and inputted the generic username and password and at first everything seemed to work ok for around 24 hours - the download speed seemed to take a bit of a hit dropping from 500mb/s to 430mb/s but the connection was stable.

But then I rebooted my Deco router and it hasn't worked properly since. My Deco keeps loosing internet connection roughly every 30 seconds so is completely unuasable.

I switched back to using my smart hub 2 with the Deco plugged in to the back and everything is back up to full speed.

Fully aware this sounds like an issue with the Deco M5 and i've reached out to TP-link customer service but thought I'd post here in case my symptoms sound familiar to anyone.

[naylor2006]

Should be no reason really why a Deco in Router mode (which is default) cant take care of being connected directly to the ONT.

I do think sometimes its worth rebooting the ONT when weird things happen with 3rd party routers.

[naylor2006]

Had a little look on the TP Link forums, apparently if you browse to the master unit via a web browser then visit System -> Logs    you might get some insight into why the internet is dropping if it indeed is.

Also, if the Deco supports allowing Ping on the WAN interface then definitely head over to ThinkBroadband and setup their free Latency monitor, its great, will really give you daily and live insights into you the quality of your connection...

For example heres the one I run..

Broadband Quality Monitor | thinkbroadband

[kevinpaulwest]

Thanks both

On further investigation it seems to be a weird WiFi issue with my Deco rather than anything to do with the internet connection.

I can maintain I constant WiFi connection from my phone to my Deco when the ethernet cable from the ONT is unplugged (but obviously no internet) and as soon as I plug in the ONT the WiFi connection starts to drop.

I don't get it - but seems like a router problem rather than anything to do with my connection.

[naylor2006]

@kevinpaulwest said

Thanks both

Seems I have morphed into two people.

That is odd, thats almost like the CPU is crashing or something, does the same occur if you power off the other units?

I would factory reset all the DECO units, add you PPPOE connection again, make sure its stable then add the other two units.

[kevinpaulwest]

Totally didn't realise both posts were the same person 😂

I'm equally thankful for both posts

[naylor2006]

It’s okay, it did make me chuckle significantly.

I actually meant to edit my original post but you can only do that for an hour and the time actually ran out whilst I was, in which case I would have remained singular.

[rbz5416]

Delete all the M5s from the app, which will factory reset them. Then try one of the others as the main unit as a new network.

Once that's connected, check for software updates. Then add the nodes one at a time, again updating if there was an update available.

One of the oddities of most mesh systems is that you can't manually change WiFi channels. That's all very well if they're good at auto selection. But the M5 is very poor, especially for the 5GHz channel. But make sure that you run the optimiser anyway. A WiFi analyser app will help you check for competing networks, but there's little you can do if the auto selection is poor.

In case you didn't know, for each connected device you can set the preferred node & WiFi band.

[kevinpaulwest]

I've tried swapping my main Deco but I have not tried with no satellite Decos.

Really strange it's only when I connect directly to the ONT and not when via the SH2 - can't work out why that would make a difference 

[naylor2006]

Carry out the steps as @rbz5416 advised, they were more thorough than mine.